I was hoping I’d never have to write to The Consumerist about a company giving me grief. I never expected that it would end up being a company that I have absolutely no connections to that forced my hand.
A few months ago, I received an e-mail from Washington Mutual claiming that my online account had been activated. Seeing as how my e-mail address is pretty run of the mill I do get a lot of e-mail from people who either A) have the wrong address or B) are trying to contact people who have given out my e-mail address as their own. This was the latter case, as the fellow who opened the online banking accounts was under the delusion that my e-mail account was actually his for quite some time and I had previously received various e-mails from websites all over the web from him trying to set up accounts.
I opened the e-mail and much to my chagrin there was no opt out link. No “click here to activate the account” link that would mean that if I deleted the e-mail and never clicked the link the poor schmuck trying to borrow my e-mail address would be out of luck. So that meant I needed to call WaMu and explain the situation so my e-mail account wouldn’t be tied to this person’s account.
The first call to customer support was laughable. When I explained the problem to the lady on the other line, she asked for my social security number. Reiterating that I had no account with WaMu, she again asked for my SSN. When I told here I had no intentions of just handing out my number, especially to a company that I did not have a business relationship with, she told me there was nothing she could do for me and that hopefully the person that started the account would, “notice after a few months and change the e-mail address.”
I then hit up the Consumerist for WaMu exec information, looking to do an executive email carpet bomb. No e-mail info yet, but I did find the phone number for the WaMu executive response team. I dialed the number and talked to a lady named Rosie Alvarez who listened to my complaint and was willing to help me out. She needed to contact the person with the account in question to change the e-mail first though, and seeing how this looked to be the answer for me I agreed to wait for them to work it out. My mistake. Apparently the dolt who signed up for the online account doesn’t pick up the phone, so they have been unable to contact him.
Many months have gone by now, and every month I get an e-mail telling me that my account statement is ready, and every month I call Mrs. Alvarez back asking her to remove my e-mail address from the person’s account. I’m tired of being the nice guy, hoping that this will work itself out in the end. I’m not a customer of WaMu, so they have no incentive to make me happy. What steps can I take next to try and get this resolved?
Ryan
Since you use gmail, we suggest you set up an email filter that automatically deletes email from WaMu so that it never reaches your inbox. (See our above illustration.) We recommend this because WaMu has no business relationship with you, and there’s really nothing they can do about your request for someone else to change the email address listed on their account.
It may seem silly to you, but how does WaMu know that you’re not a scammer of some kind? The other Ryan is just lucky that his account statements are going to a nice, honest person such as yourself.
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@homerjay: Why is it such a hot button issue for you that you had to drag those two words, and overdraft fees (which have nothing to do with unwanted spam) into the discussion, then continue to go on the offensive against someone who points out that it was unwarranted?
Probably for similar reasons.
@icarusprime: So it’s the victim’s fault.
@Buran: Touché. Truce.
@Buran: @homerjay: Please, guys, go piss on each other somewhere else, K?
I just got off the phone with Mrs. Alvarez. During the conversation, I sent her an e-mail from gmail, proving that it is mine. She’s going to try again tomorrow to get this idiot to realize that he’s got the wrong e-mail address.
I even told her to have this guy contact me. I’d love to explain to him how e-mail actually works.
@Buran:
whoa! … um, no, i am not saying that at all. i am just adressing the email address. he is even aware that his email address could be the issue as it seems to have been an issue with other things. I actually use Wamu and I am pretty happy (for the first time in a long time with a bank) so it sucks that he is getting the run around.
My first email addy (a hotmail account) was created in 98/99 it was pretty generic as well and I finally ditched it in 2001/2002 for countless issues that were also not my fault. it seemed daunting but all was well in the world of electronic mail with in a month for me. but it seems it is not an option for him so … good luck.
@icarusprime: Hey, I can’t say I’ve not considered it. But so very many people I know use this account, I can’t get rid of it just yet.
Mrs. Alverez got back to me, she managed to contact this guy again, and it turns out it’s his wife that has the account wrong. She was just making an assumption that said account was his. They are going to change their settings, and use another e-mail address.
Huzzah!
@Buran, @Kabuki: You’re right, I hadn’t considered the “access to financial information” aspect. In my day, electronic banking was in its infancy, and it was always with custom software, not a web site. So misdirected e-mail was always about mailing lists, clubs, your recent eBay purchase, etc. I saved a bunch of the good ones; I need to go look through them one day.
Anyway, in those cases, the privacy harm of me doing that kind of redirection was low – if there was important personal information involved, they would usually understand the importance of them fixing it before I let word get around that they sent credit card numbers to random recipients, etc. So the only people left with “Nothing we can do to change it” were people with relatively uninteresting transactions – mailing list signups.
If it was something you needed to go All The Way with, you could probably get an laywer who knows his privacy, IP, tresspass, and other wire-line rules, and make sure that if “bank sends me a password for an account”, then “I access bank using that password” is not “unauthorized access”, which goes to the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act.
Sounds like in this case, logic and persistence prevailed.. no, really, this isn’t me, I swear.
Sounds like you had success, but if they don’t answer their phone and this has been going on for months, what about snail mail?
I had something similar happen to me with the Seattle Public Library, but one phone call was all it took to get it straightened out. I think it did take me a few minutes to get the lady I was talking to to understand the problem, though.
I have the same thing happening from Verizon Wireless. Every month I get a mail letting me know this guy’s online bill is ready. The email has a link at the bottom for “If you have received this email in error…” but that just takes you to the support site where you have to log into your account to get help.
One of the emails actually included the guy’s phone number, so I called him and told him to change his email address. He said he would, but I still get the emails. Maybe he thought I was just some crazy guy calling him.
@ARPRINCE: Wouldn’t the people at the bank be able to tell him that they haven’t been sending him any e-mail?
@Jasmo: We’re done.
@homerjay: Deal!